Abstract | Keywords | Export | Availability | Bookmark

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Between 1945 and 1950, approximately 130,000 Germans were interned in the Soviet zone of occupied Germany, including in former Nazi concentration camps. One third of detainees died, prompting comparisons with Nazi terror. But what about the western zones, where the Americans, British, and French also detained hundreds of thousands of Germans without trial? This first in-depth study compares internment by all four occupying powers, asking who was interned, how they were treated, and when and why they were arrested and released. It confirms the incomparably appalling conditions and death rates in the Soviet camps but identifies similarities in other respects. Andrew H. Beattie argues that internment everywhere was an inherently extrajudicial measure with punitive and preventative dimensions that aimed to eradicate Nazism and create a new Germany. By recognising its true nature and extent, he suggests that denazification was more severe and coercive but also more differentiated and complex than previously thought.

Prisoner-of-war camps --- Concentration camps --- World War, 1939-1945 --- Prisoners of war --- Denazification --- Military government --- Military rule --- Public administration --- Civil-military relations --- Military occupation --- Reconstruction (1939-1951) --- Death camps --- Detention camps --- Extermination camps --- Internment camps --- Detention of persons --- Military camps --- P.O.W. camps --- POW camps --- Prisons --- History --- Prisoners and prisons, German. --- Housing --- Germany --- Nazi concentration camps --- Concentration camps, Nazi --- Death camps, Nazi --- Extermination camps, Nazi --- Nazi death camps --- Nazi extermination camps --- Incarceration camps --- Prisoner-of-war camps - Germany - History - 20th century --- Concentration camps - Germany - History - 20th century --- World War, 1939-1945 - Prisoners and prisons, German --- Prisoners of war - Germany - History - 20th century --- World War, 1939-1945 - Concentration camps - Germany --- Denazification - Germany - History - 20th century --- Military government - Germany - History - 20th century --- Prisonnier de guerre --- Camp de concentration --- XXe s., 1901-2000 --- Guerre mondiale, 2e, 1939-1945 --- Dénazification --- Gouvernement militaire --- Allemagne --- Germany - History - 1945-1955